One NFL pundit foresaw this exact 49ers slump before the season began

A 49ers loss Sunday against the Jaguars would spell disaster for the team — and turn one of the wildest predictions of the NFL season into reality.

After a 5-0 start that mirrored some of the greatest teams in franchise history, the 49ers came crashing back to Earth, losing three straight to the Cleveland Browns, Minnesota Vikings and the Cincinnati Bengals. Even worse was two of those losses came at the hands of a backup quarterback, and a quarterback known for coming up short in prime time games reversing his curse.

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who saw this scenario playing out exactly as it did, except for one football analyst who is a Niners loss away from his social media prophecy coming true. Brett Kollmann is a YouTuber who became popular for his thorough breakdowns on various players, coaches and overall systems throughout the NFL by presenting hours of copious game tape consumption in a way the average football fan can understand. The series is called “The Film Room.”

On Sept. 4, a full six days before the 49ers began their season with a 30-7 thrashing of the Steelers, Yahoo Sports’ NFL writer Charles McDonald asked his followers on social media for “the most vile unpopular take you have about the 2023 NFL season.” Kollmann obliged with one specifically about the Niners.

“49ers are going to lose four of five during this stretch. Maybe even lose all five,” Kollman wrote with a screenshot of the Niners’ schedule from Weeks 5 through 10. “Seattle wins the west.”

Obviously Brettstradamus wasn’t perfect, but given the prompt was for “genuinely shocking and off-putting” takes, the fact that his primary prediction is one San Francisco loss away from coming true basically makes him a football oracle. What makes it better is that Kollmann is known to be a jinx for the subject he chooses to cover.

SFGATE reached out to Kollmann’s representatives with a couple questions about what he saw in the Niners that led to this prediction. Turns out it was more about who the Niners were playing than the team itself.

“I had concerns about the 49ers pass protection outside of Trent Williams (which ultimately turned out to be a real problem for this year) and so going up against a pass rush like the Browns or a blitz-happy defense like the Vikings was a really tall order for them,” Kollmann said via email. “And not only that, but at the time I had major concerns about how they would match up against a defense that could play man coverage all day long with zone help over the middle.

“Cleveland had the best secondary in the league going into this year – and they still do – and I thought that their style of defense would cause a lot of problems for Purdy and his weapons … which ultimately it did,” he continued. “They still came close to winning, but that style of defense is a very tough matchup for them nonetheless. I think they are going to run into a very similar type of buzzsaw when they play the Ravens later this year.”

Still, he’s firmly aware of just how close it was to looking silly, particularly after the 49ers crushed Dallas. On Oct. 23, after the 49ers lost to the Vikings, he wrote, “I’ll be honest, two weeks ago I thought this was going to end up being the coldest of cold takes, but it’s somehow not entirely dead. Yet.”

Six days later, following the Niners’ loss to the Bengals, he added, “There is a lot at stake personally for me after the 49ers bye week.”

When Niners coach Kyle Shanahan was asked about what jumped out to him while reviewing film from this season, he replied with a rather blunt “I mean, it’s everything.”

“I think we’ve done a lot of good things when you just look at it numbers-wise and stuff,” Shanahan said. “But I think we’ve got to really eliminate some of the times we kill ourselves. You don’t ever want to take stuff away from other teams because other teams always make it harder. But I do feel the times we’ve struggled, we’ve just made some key mistakes that I think we’re capable of not making. I think we’re the ones who have slowed ourselves down.”

“We’ve got to get more points,” he added.

Kollmann is still holding to his prediction for Sunday’s matchup against Jacksonville. However, he believes in the 49ers far more than what his prediction of doom would have most people think.

“I still think they are going to go on a deep playoff run, and possibly get to the conference championship game,” Kollmann wrote. “I think there is a lot of nuance that should be used when talking about this team, because ultimately football is a game of matchups and two things can be true. Number one, they matched up really horribly with several of the teams in the middle of their schedule and could very easily lose four in a row, and number two … they match up VERY well against the Eagles. So if they go into January, win a wild card game, and then have to play Philly in the divisional round … just based on individual matchups and how Philly’s scheme operates I would give the Niners a better chance of beating them then I would give them to beat a team like Jacksonville.

“Football is a weird, wonderful sport in that way. Ultimately, I think they’ll be fine,” he concluded.